Having been a Matrox dual-head diehard since who-knows-when, I have to say that if the 650/750 give me the resolutionh/sharpness/clarity of my G400 Max and G550 AND give me at least a bit more speed, I'm still buying. I have yet to find another videocard that matches the 2D performance of the G400 Max and G550, and anyone who has used dual display will never go back to one. 3 is too much for my desk, but desks can also be changed

Matrox is not one to "optimize" for benchmarks. I don't think that the nForce2 makes that much of a difference so there must be something wrong there. The KT400 scores should indicate what the performance is really like.

We don't yet know the clocks of P650/P750. I have not yet seen those mentioned anywhere. It is bandwidth limited, as it has a 128Bit interface, compared to the original 256.

Parhelia remains the cheapest professional card with certified AutoCAD drivers, and many others.

You really do have to compare for yourself to see the image quality of a Matrox card. It's all subjective, and if your eyes aren't that great it really won't matter, will it?

Oh my will it matter very much. Just try reading http://www.arstechnica.com on with a crappy AGP card and you'll have to crank the brightness to read the blurry dark text. On a Matrox with a nice CRT/LCD - their white text is as sharp as a knife.

Radeonman: As I said, it is something you really can't tell with numbers or pictures (Although I think I saw some site, TecChannel I believe, that tested signal strength and Matrox G550 came out on top) You can't take a picture of it, screenshots won't prove anything, using a digicam on it is just silly and the detail you are attempting to capture is gone. You have to see it in person.

My parents regularly use dual monitors at their office... and they've never found a reason to use anything other than radeons/geforces. There's only a problem with 1 computer, and thats because its a cheap workstation for temps, using 2 different video cards (one AGP, one PCI). And even then I've never been able to reproduce the supposed problem in many hours of working with it....

I agree with bsdgeek -- it is something you can't help notice if you see the two side by side. You certainly don't have to be a "video"phile. I wanted to move on from the Matrox G400 Max 1.5~2 years ago. Tried several ATIs, a couple of nVidias. At the time, nothing even came close for ease of use in the dual monitor software, or in the 2D quality. At least not in my price range. (<US$150) So I ended up with a G550 on my backup machine.

It's kind of like quiet computers. You talk about it with people, they nod their heads, yeah, yeah, sure, sure they agree, but you know they don't really get it... and then they hear my (your) near-silent setups and their jaws drop open & they go: "OH! WOW! I had no idea! You sure that thing is on?! Oh ok the monitor's on... um... holy tomb noises...." and so on. And then they want one just like yours.

No offense to those people who use Radeon or Geforce, I use one myself. If you are into any form of 3D gaming then Radeon and Geforce will serve you better, but for professional 2D output nothing beats the Matrox. You have to use it side by side to see the difference, Matrox is razor sharp. You would initially think it is the monitor that is doing this, but stick in a Radeon/Geforce and you can clearly see the difference.

Matrox is for serious 2D work, whereas Radeon/Geforce is a compromise for 2D but gives you the chance to have mega frame rates for games.

I can also vouch for the qualities of Matrox -- in addition to amazing 2D clarity, their driver features and support are quite good. They support full featured dual monitor support in Win2K and Linux, too, I believe. Multiple desktops, independent resolutions, mode switching, zooming -- I am so looking forward to the P650!

I will say that ATi cards have pretty good clarity, but with nVidia, you are at the mercy of the maker -- I hear that LeadTek is one of the better GeForce cards, in terms of 2D image quality.

The pictures on the Matrox site does not show a fan for either card although they only specificly state that the P650 is fanless. The review clearly shows a big noisy fan on the P750. What gives? Does the P650 have a fan or not?

Hmm... interesting thread. Is there a super high quality + relatively cheap matrox PCI card I can use @ 1600x1200? I wouldn't want to ditch my ti4600 for games, but if 2d quality is super high, I wouldn't mind use a mechanical switch to go back and forth... ideas?

I did. I ran two monitors on my G400 for a little while, and frankly I hardly ever had any real use for it. And I also think that even two monitors take up too much desk space.

I stand corrected. Let me rephrase: I will never go back to one monitor. When I am working on grahics, text & layout all at once in the usual deadline rush, there's no way I want to be switching back and forth between windows on one mon... except maybe a 40 x 20" flat planar device? anyone want to make a special contribution for lifetime membership into the silent muse cateory of the SPCR forum?

matrox have uber quality, ati are good, my leadtek gf4 was erm soft
tho i hear they use diff parts to most, so u gotta use there drivers for best iq.
oh and get a good kvm, i got a cheap one and i get ghosting etc cheap cables :'(

I will never go back to one monitor. When I am working on grahics, text & layout all at once in the usual deadline rush, there's no way I want to be switching back and forth between windows on one mon... except maybe a 40 x 20" flat planar device?

No, but newegg has pulled the item descriptions for both the G450 (sold out for a few weeks anyway) and the G550 from their site.

Figures....I had been waiting for the release of the 650 and 750 cards to push down the price on the 550, but lost patience last week and ordered one I'll see what the new release does to the market this week and maybe RMA.

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